In an odd way, it may be Kundera's most musical fiction, all about over- and under-tones. The novel itself is one of the mordant fictions of Kundera's Czech-period-the story of a youthful jape made by a young man, Ludvik Jahn, a joke that escapes all proportions in the unnatural quiet of repression and fear of the tone-deaf state. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.Shades of the Rocky movies: This is English translation number five of Kundera's 1967 novel. For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. This edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of The Joke. Now, more than a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Milan Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence. And he says it with passion, with good humor, and with love." -Salman RushdieĪll too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Milan Kundera is an artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere, who says that the good (and evil) that issues from men's souls matters much more than the deeds of a State.
"It is impossible to do justice here to the subtleties, comedy, and wisdom of this very beautiful novel. "A thoughtful, intricate, ambivalent novel with the reach of greatness in it." -John Updike
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